Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 246 posts

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#191

Post by aksss »

m463 wrote: post #138
totalZero wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the issue is link speed symmetry, then cable should be out of the running entirely. Even my phone offers better upload speed than cable in my neighborhood. Same for my parents' place across the country. New money should go to fiber, satellite, wireless, or nothing at all.

I believe it's a model to segregate pricing. business costs more, gets good upload. Residential costs less, gets good download. That said, fiber is really really efficient and can put 100 customers utilizing the entire 100m on one strand.

Business costs more because it’s less oversubscribed than resi, also is intended to be more robust in terms of change windows, and depending on your provider may have some best effort SLAs.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#192

Post by aksss »

greedo wrote: post #46
rayiner wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money. Very little government money has been spent on broadband. Federal funding for broadband dates back only to the Obama administration. And cable companies have largely not received this money. You’re thinking of something else.

I think the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was supposed to help improve Internet access through its Universal Service provision. Of course all the telecoms pocketed the money and didn't do shit. https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service

In my state there was USAC funding that went unawarded year over year, and for all I know still is. Carriers just don’t find it worth their while in many cases especially if they don’t need to worry about any threats to the captive markets they already serve.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#193

Post by noahtallen »

rayiner wrote: post #37
totalZero wrote: post #15

Imagine how good our network technology policy would be if the Senate weren't run by septagenarians and octogenarian. I fear that data caps for home internet will become standard. There is no technological reason for these caps. For wireless, they could be defended by arguing that companies only get to use so much spectrum because of FCC laws. But the only limit for home internet is the ISP's willingness to deploy eq…

Are millennials any different? Outside tech, I don’t know anybody who cares about broadband as an aside, except when pushing a different political angle such as inequality.

People who have terrible internet care quite a bit, especially if they use it a lot. Many, many people I know living in rural areas of the US get 3-6mbps max. The only hardwired option is DSL, since cable companies often don’t service these areas. Everyone who uses internet a lot for things like streaming is very frustrated by the situation, and that’s often younger generations.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#194

Post by aksss »

greedo wrote: post #48
rayiner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are millennials any different? Outside tech, I don’t know anybody who cares about broadband as an aside, except when pushing a different political angle such as inequality.

My kids sure now what a high speed Internet connection is, and they're as far from "tech" as you could imagine. Ask any gamer too...

Yeah I think in many cases it’s taken for granted by the youngest generation. My youngest nephews have never known a time when you were unable to see live video of the person on the other end of a phone call. My cell phone (on cell net) just clocked 82/7Mbps. I still remember getting my first cable modem at a whopping 1Mbps nominal dl. XD

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#195

Post by noahtallen »

kcb wrote: post #188
lmilcin wrote: post #137

I live in Poland and I am BAFFLED at how bad internet in US, supposedly one of the most developed countries on Earth, is. I have commercial (ie high priority), 600Mbit/120Mbit broadband with extremely stable (under 15ms, over 99% of th time) round trip to most of the Poland, for equivalent of 20 USD per month. I know its not the same everywhere in Poland, but consider I also have three mobile internet plans. One of t…

How bad is it really? I get that there are rural and outlier areas but the average bandwidth is higher in the US than Poland. Maybe I just find it hard to relate, but I and most of the heavily populated areas of the North East have had symmetrical FTTH for 15 years now. We have Gigabit up and down for about $90 USD a month.

Many millions have poor internet connections: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/04/08/its-tim...

If you drive out of a populated area across the US, nearly all of it is very sparsely populated, and therefore has terrible internet. 18% of Americans live in these areas, and that’s 54 million people. That’s a lot of frustrated individuals! Even in more populated rural areas like Ohio, you might get cable (but not fiber) to the nearest village, but even a half mile out of town, it’s only DSL (6mbps down on a good day).

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#196

Post by msh »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #179
new_realist wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t you move to 5G now?

Most of America doesn't have true (mm wave) 5g. About 1/3 of America lacks "5g" entirely. Assuming one does have access it's not financially prudent for most households to buy into 5g when the caps are as low as 100gb/mo. https://www.androidauthority.com/where-is-5g-available-in-th...

You dont need mm wave to get decent speeds on 5G. Sub6 5G can give you a gigabit with much better coverage.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#197

Post by aksss »

betterunix2 wrote: post #114
toast0 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If the network is more heavily used, it will require more capacity where it connects to other parts of the network or other networks. More ports and more wires means more failures of ports and wires and more diagnosis of ports and wires and more replacement of ports and wires. Or, if capacity is not increased to meet demand, you need more people at the callcenter to ignore customer complaints.

That sounds like a fixed cost to build the network, not the cost of running the network. I agree, building a higher capacity network is more expensive, but how does the cost of running a network change with utilization? If a network is underutilized does it somehow cost less to operate?

Well just think about the backhaul or middle mile costs - the more the network is utilized, the higher the middle mile cost commitments will be. There’s a direct relationship there, assuming your oversubscription targets stay basically constant.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#198

Post by aksss »

KirillPanov wrote: post #168
totalZero wrote: post #15

Imagine how good our network technology policy would be if the Senate weren't run by septagenarians and octogenarian. I fear that data caps for home internet will become standard. There is no technological reason for these caps. For wireless, they could be defended by arguing that companies only get to use so much spectrum because of FCC laws. But the only limit for home internet is the ISP's willingness to deploy eq…

> if the Senate weren't run by septagenarians and octogenarian. Dude that would be such a nightmare-world. Imagine life without techno remixes of Senator Ted Stevens. Teh horror! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8XSo0etBC4

Tubular

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#199

Post by msh »

teach wrote: post #180
lmilcin wrote: post #137

I live in Poland and I am BAFFLED at how bad internet in US, supposedly one of the most developed countries on Earth, is. I have commercial (ie high priority), 600Mbit/120Mbit broadband with extremely stable (under 15ms, over 99% of th time) round trip to most of the Poland, for equivalent of 20 USD per month. I know its not the same everywhere in Poland, but consider I also have three mobile internet plans. One of t…

So Poland has two things going for it: (1) Poland is a LOT smaller than the United States. It's not much bigger than the state of Wyoming, yet it has more than 60x the population. That makes building infrastructure a lot cheaper and more profitable. (2) The US had the Internet FIRST. That's not an advantage when it comes to infrastructure. For example, England had roads hundreds of years before the US did, so roads i…

I think you point 2 is much better than point 1.

There are parts of the US that have similar or higher population density to poland or other european countries. There are no reason they cant get as good internet. Not all ISP's have to cover the entire country.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#200

Post by msh »

kryogen1c wrote: post #38

Lets try and suss out some of the multiple issues with US internet: -regulating ISPs as a free market is, to be hyperbolic, a disaster. there is effectively a monopoly in most parts of the country. -25/3 Mbps is a very reasonable speed for most people. the issue is that its provided on a best effort basis that is never maintained for long, if at all. netflix says thats enough to stream UHD[0] -FTA: "Those data points…

> 25/3 Mbps is a very reasonable speed for most people.

No, 3 megabits upload is not reasonable. If people have to work from home or school from home the 3 megabits upload quickly becomes too little for a google meet/teams video chat or screensharing.

It becomes even worse if multiple family members have to do it at the same time.

Post reply on HN